You know how certain songs immediately transport you back to wherever you heard them the first time? 1973 Melbourne, Florida. Sitting around with a bunch of newly made redneck friends, drinking 45's and rocking out. Wow.

The keyboard player, who co-wrote many of the heavy rock band’s legendary songs including Smoke On The Water, had pancreatic cancer.

A statement posted on his website yesterday declared that Lord – who had said that writing music had been therapy through his illness – had passed ‘from Darkness to Light’.

The musician, who had enjoyed success in the last decade as a classical composer, suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism at a private clinic in London. His publicist said that he was surrounded by his family.

Lord founded Deep Purple in 1968 and it went on to be one of the world’s most successful rock bands, selling more than 100million albums.

Note- I swiped the headline from the article and never even noticed the discrepancy in names. Grassy to readers.

I love "Smoke on the Water," and it does bring back fond memories. I was 20, in my junior year of college at UGA, partying a lot, but still keeping my grades up because my parents expected me to. LOL It's sad hearing that Jon Lord has passed. He was one of the pioneers of rock music.

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